Often a user needs to transport recreational or utility vehicles to some location and back, making moving to and from the locations critical. A common way to load these vehicles from the ground onto an elevated plane such as a truck or trailer is a ramp.
Conventional wheeled vehicle loading devices have their downsides as they are difficult to operate, transport and store. Current ramps come in various shapes and sizes and are designed to be used with a variety of vehicles. Through a series of operations, current ramps may transform to a more portable shape than the original loading configuration; however, these ramps are still difficult to store and transport.
Single lane ramps are independent pieces that lack stability and grant twice the difficulty in storage and transportation because two ramps are needed to load a standard four-wheeled vehicle.
Three lane longitudinal folding ramps are difficult to store because the folding operation does not decrease the overall length of the ramp resulting in an object long and difficult to handle.
Width-wise folding ramps decrease the overall length of the ramp but not the width resulting in a bulky compromise that is equally as difficult to transport, handle, and store.
There also exist other ramps or loading systems that permanently remain attached to the platform. The disadvantage to these devices is that after the initial installation they are dedicated to the loading platform rendering it much less useful for other applications. This is important as a common loading platform is a truck bed which is designed to carry and transport a variety of objects. With a permanently attached apparatus, the truck bed becomes much less useful.